


I believe in the love that you gave me

by janie_tangerine



Series: a runaway American dream [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (eventually) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Books, Brienne of Tarth is the Best, F/M, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Jaime Lannister Needs a Hug, Love Confessions, Past Abuse, Prostitution, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, the author's steinbeck thing is showing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23394586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: “I guess that’s where I tell you that I used to imagine I would leave one day.”“I figured out as much. And?”“And, it always felt… like it would be a liberation, but I wouldn’t be happy as I left,” she goes on, “because I have one friend who most likely will stay in Boston after she graduates and I don’t really know about going there. It never quite felt right if it didn’t mean a college acceptance coming with it. So I would just… leave and be on my own same as I’ve been almost all of my life.”“And now it’s changed?”She figures that there’s nothing too bad in letting him know. “If I presume that you are in the picture, it feels a lot less daunting.”Or: have an extra scene in which there are Heartfelt Declarations.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: a runaway American dream [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1464508
Comments: 14
Kudos: 50





	I believe in the love that you gave me

**Author's Note:**

> Aaand for the part where in the weekly writing challenge a prompt was hooker au, I'm showing up with a missing scene from the main fic that decided to be written for the purpose and was too long to stick in the chaptered prequels/alternate povs. Specifically, this is set at some point between chapters five and six and covers a thing I hadn't exactly done in the original because there wasn't any place where it felt sensed to write it, so... have some not-planned fluff and see you later with more spamming because I'm on a roll these days.
> 
> As usual, nothing belongs to me, the title is from Springsteen as _no one_ absolutely would have suspected and just for context, _Sweet Thursday_ 's main plot is 'local loner scientist falls in love with newcomer prostitute in town and his friends scheme to get them together and succeed' ;) *saunters back downwards again*

“You know, I was expecting it to end like shit,” Jaime says, and for a moment Brienne doesn’t put two and two together because they hadn’t said a thing since they went back to bed after washing off the results of a good two hours of making good use of Jaime’s bed — they’re under the covers now, mid-March snow falling softly against the window of his room, and they hadn’t managed to see each other for a week straight before today. She figures that it was the price for having had a good Valentine’s day. He also looks like complete shit, as usual when she doesn’t see him for more than three days straight, and she _hates_ it, but what can she do about it for now?

Nothing, and she hates it.

“Wait, _what_ were you expecting to end like shit?”

“ _Sweet Thursday_ ,” he says.

Oh.

_Right_.

He did finish _Cannery Row_ around St. Valentine’s, he _did_ tell her, so of course he went on to the sequel. 

“Any specific reason why?” She asks, not that she doesn’t suspect the answer already.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he rolls his eyes, “ _Of Mice and Men_ wasn’t exactly uplifting and I _did_ watch two other movies based on books he wrote, seemed to me like shit endings are to be expected.”

“ _East of Eden_ cannibalized the original and _The Grapes of Wrath_ ended better than the book, to be entirely truthful.”

“… I don’t even want to know,” he shakes his head, “but — never mind. It was a nice surprise, I guess.”

“I figured you could use a… _not shitty ending_ at some point. I mean, you cannot only read tragic stories all the time.”

“Indeed,” he sighs, sounding wistful.

Then she realizes _why_ he might.

“You know,” she says tentatively, “if you liked the ending for the reason I _think_ you would —”

“Probably,” he admits. “Not that it’s in the cards, but it’s… nice to see that at least it is for fictional colleagues.”

She rolls her eyes, moving a hand around his back. His head falls on her shoulder, and gods but she _wishes_ she had the means to get the both of them on a car and drive out of here.

She _wishes_.

“Come on,” she says, “who says it’s… out of the cards?”

He huffs. “Yeah, well, I used to think it wasn’t ten years ago, then I realized that I was deluding myself and I probably should have a long time before. Would have saved myself a lot of suffering.”

Brienne, for the umpteenth time, hates that she has no _good_ , ready answer to give him.

“Or maybe we _could_ think about it,” she blurts instead, wanting to know _where_ that came from.

“… We could do _what_?” He asks, his tone of voice suddenly way, _way_ more serious.

“I mean,” she says, “now it’s… what it is. I can’t really save money and you can’t do that either and we should probably… worry about that. But it _will_ have to get better, and I know I don’t want to get buried here and I know that neither do you. If when it does we pool resources together… who says we can’t leave at some point?”

“What,” he half-smiles, “you’ll drive an old-ass car out of here until we get somewhere decent — California might be a tad too far but what have you — while our friends cheerfully wave at us hoping we get a better life than what we left behind? Because in order to make _that_ happen we should have friends, you know. At least three of them.”

“Your brother is one,” she shrugs, “I’m sure we could find three others. But that’s not the point and you know it.”

“I do,” he admits, not quite looking at her. “I just really _don’t_ like deluding myself because then it’s just… so much worse when things don’t come to pass, you know?”

She thinks she gets it.

Still —

“I guess that’s where I tell you that I used to imagine I would leave one day.”

“I figured out as much. And?”

“ _And_ , it always felt… like it would be a liberation, but I wouldn’t be _happy_ as I left,” she goes on, “because I have _one_ friend who most likely will stay in Boston after she graduates and I don’t really know about going there. It never quite felt right if it didn’t mean a college acceptance coming with it. So I would just… leave and be on my own same as I’ve been almost all of my life.”

“And now it’s changed?”

She figures that there’s nothing too bad in letting him know. “If I presume that _you_ are in the picture, it feels a lot less daunting.”

He looks back at her now, eyes wide, as if he hadn’t bene expecting it, and no one should look like hearing such a thing felt like a punch in the kidneys, but he is and she’s about to ask what’s wrong, but then he grasps her hand, the closest to him, and —

“Brienne, I love you,” he blurts, sound like he’s terrified of saying it, and — well, _right_ , they did tell each other through those poems back in December but not _straight_ , not like this, and of course he sounds like _that_ , because when has he told that to anyone else last, probably she doesn’t even want to think about and _he_ doesn’t want to think about it, and she should say it back, she _will_ , but —

She smiles a bit as she leans closer to him. “You got yourself a girl, then,” she says, and she sees all tension drain from his face as he recognizes the line, and then she’s inching just a bit further —

“Oh, and I love you, too,” she says, before kissing the grin off his face, and it feels way easier than she’d have thought it ever might as she moves her arms around his shoulders and he kisses her back, and tomorrow she’ll have to leave and it’ll be another two days in which he fucks other people to pay the bills and she wishes he at least enjoyed it with more of them than not but she knows it’s the contrary, but —

But then she’ll come back and she plans on doing that until they find something better.

And she thinks she’ll find him some more reads with happy endings since she’s at it.

He _does_ have a dire need of them.

End.


End file.
